MEDIA ROOTS — The two-tiered American justice system is in full effect as felonious political actors advocate and promote the Iranian terrorist group Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) in order to pursue US hegemony in the region.  

In 2010, the United States Supreme Court ruled in the case Holder v. Humanitarian Law that providing material support in coordination with a designated foreign terrorist organization is a felony punishable by 15 years in prison.  If you or I took money from the MEK to advocate lifting the terrorist designation, how long do you think it would take to be hooded, shackled and indefinitely detained under the National Defense Authorization Act?  

Abby Martin of Media Roots and RT reports on the current efforts to convince the State Department to de-list MEK as a foreign terrorist organization.

Abby Martin – State Department Lobbies Terrorists for RT

A wave of American leaders have illegally lined up to get their slice of the MEK bankroll for speaking on their behalf.  Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Hugh Shelton said, “Why would we not want to put the weight and power of this country behind an organization that we know stands for the same principles we stand for, and that is the best-organized, best-led organization to take on the current Iranian regime?”  Louis Freeh, former Director of the FBI stated that “MEK is leading the fight for freedom in Iran. Just as our military forces fight for freedom on the battlefields, you fight in a more difficult and much more dangerous place.”  

The end-game of all this bought and paid for rhetoric is a writ entered on June 1, 2012 to the United States Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. asking Hillary Clinton, the U.S. Secretary of State to review the designation of MEK as a foreign terrorist organizations within four months or by default the designation will be removed.

These naïve politicos with imperialist illusions of Iranian regime change want to jump in bed with the MEK who vocally supported the U.S. embassy takeover in Tehran in 1979 and vehemently called for the execution of diplomats in 1981.  The very same MEK that attempted to kidnap US Ambassador Douglas MacArthur in 1971, wounded Air force General Harold Price in 1972, assassinated US Army Comptroller Louis Lee Hawkins in 1973, assassinated US Air Force officers Paul Shaffer and Jack Turner and assassinated American employees William Cottrell, Donald Smith and Robert Krongard in 1976.  The very same group that hijacked a plane in 1971 and bombed and killed 70 members of the Iranian parliament including Chief Justice Mohammad Beheshti, the second highest ranking official in Iran at the time.  MEK also reportedly celebrated the 9/11 terrorist attacks, as well as helped carry out the assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists last year.

American justice calls on the following Americans to surrender and submit to interrogation so it can be determined what degree of material support they provided officially designated terrorists: Tom Ridge, Wesley Clark, Michael Mukasey, Frances Townshend, James Jones, Peter Pace, Hugh Shelton, Louis Freeh, Michael Hayden, Anthony Zinni, Rudi Giuliani, Howard Dean, Andy Card, Bill Richardson, Lee Hamilton, John Bolton and all other Americans that feel they can operate above the law.  All money received for speaking engagements should be returned, resignations should be tendered and pleas should be entered.

The arrogant criminal hypocrisy is absolutely surreal as American politicos subvert the draconian laws they perpetrate upon the rest of America.  Swift sanctions are necessary to ensure the general public that all Americans live under one set of laws. So far the defenses offered by these haughty elitists are their right to free speech, which is specifically limited by the Holder Supreme Court case.  Their argument is that the MEK will make a fine marionette for American imposed regime change in Iran.  But Americans don’t want war or regime change in Iran—America wants representatives with common sense and ethics to be focused on this country.  Let the Iranian people determine their own leadership and destiny.

Chris Martin for Media Roots

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SALON –We now have an extraordinary situation that reveals the impunity with which political elites commit the most egregious crimes, as well as the special privileges to which they explicitly believe they — and they alone — are entitled. That a large bipartisan cast of Washington officials got caught being paid substantial sums of money by an Iranian dissident group that is legally designated by the U.S. Government as a Terrorist organization, and then meeting with and advocating on behalf of that Terrorist group, is very significant for several reasons. New developments over the last week make it all the more telling. Just behold the truly amazing set of facts that have arisen:

In June, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its 6-3 ruling in the case of Holder v. Humanitarian Law. In that case, the Court upheld the Obama DOJ’s very broad interpretation of the statute that criminalizes the providing of “material support” to groups formally designated by the State Department as Terrorist organizations. The five-judge conservative bloc (along with Justice Stevens) held that pure political speech could be permissibly criminalized as “material support for Terrorism” consistent with the First Amendment if the “advocacy [is] performed in coordination with, or at the direction of, a foreign terrorist organization” (emphasis added). In other words, pure political advocacy in support of a designated Terrorist group could be prosecuted as a felony — punishable with 15 years in prison — if the advocacy is coordinated with that group.

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Photo Iran flag wikicommons

MEDIA ROOTS — Seeds are at the very core of the public commons as the first link in an essential food chain.  Throughout the 20th century, the agricultural biotech giant Monsanto perverted intellectual property laws to corner the world’s seed supply.

By allowing the food supply to be attached to the bottom line of a corporation, the world places its future in the hands of a corrupt few.  Abby Martin of Media Roots and RT explores the multinational corporation’s sordid past of corruption and toxicity and their current scandalous dealings.

 Abby Martin reports on Monsanto’s corruption and current dealings for RT TV

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Abby Martin explores Monsanto’s scandalous legacy in depth for RT TV

The Monsanto Corporation has a nefarious public record that extends beyond the genetically modified seed industry.  It is responsible for the controversial artificial sweeteners saccharin and aspartame that are used in more than 6,000 consumer foods and beverages; dioxin based herbicides like 245-T/24-D (Agent Orange) that directly killed and maimed millions of Vietnamese; banned pesticides such as dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) responsible for the death of millions of marine animals, birds of prey and amphibians; deadly polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) discharged into rivers and landfills at the expense of human health; and Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH) to unnaturally increase the milk yield in lactating cows.

In particular, the American legacy of PCBs is horrifying as witnessed by Pittsfield, Massachusetts when locals were given PCB-contaminated material to use as fill.  General Electric released millions of pounds of PCB-contaminated waste from capacitor manufacturing plants in the Hudson River.  In North Carolina, 240 miles of road was sprayed with more than 30,000 pounds of PCB-contaminated oil, during the infamous “midnight dumping.”  Finally, in Anniston, Alabama, the site of a Monsanto chemical factory for 50 years was exposed as the most toxic city in America after it was discovered Monsanto had been dumping high concentrations of PCBs into local tributaries.

This blatant poisoning of the public commons as massive and wicked as it seems pales in comparison to allowing a company with this sort of record to control and modify the food supply.  Monsanto expanded its share of the worlds seed supply with its $1.4 billion acquisition of Seminis Incorporated, the world’s largest developer, grower and marketer of fruit and vegetable seeds in 2005.  Two years later, Monsanto purchased the Delta and Pine Land Company for $1.5 billion, staking its position as a major player in the cotton seed business and the demonic terminator gene designed to increase farmer dependency on seed suppliers.  Additionally, the corporation also purchased the Dutch De Ruiter Seed company to establish itself alongside DuPont as the world’s largest supplier of seeds. 

In addition to the sick and dying humans, animals and plants in the wake of Monsanto’s bottom line, the company has a legacy of legal troubles across the globe.  Suing and being sued is merely a business expense to be countered by penetrating political and regulatory systems.  Former Monsanto employees are firmly entrenched in the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and even the Supreme Court.  Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, a former Monsanto attorney, ruled in favor of genetically modified crops in the J. E. M. Ag Supply, Inc. v. Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc. case.  Linda Fisher rotated from EPA bureaucrat, to Vice President of Monsanto, to Vice President of DuPont.  Michael Taylor was an FDA commissioner, Monsanto attorney and recently passed backed through the revolving door as President Barack Obama’s Food Safety Czar in the FDA.

Monsanto maintains a stranglehold on the American government by deploying lobbyists to coerce legislators into doing what regulators cannot. This includes an emphasis on resisting the overwhelming public cry to label genetically modified foods, avoid responsibility for colony collapse disorder wreaking havoc on global bee populations and deterrence of any effort to institute independent government led testing of genetically modified seeds and food. While Monsanto maintains a motto of “Improving Agriculture, Improving Lives,” its true intentions were summed up by Monsanto’s director of corporate communication Phil Angell in 1998 when he explained, “Monsanto should not have to vouch for the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is FDA’s job.”

Chris Martin for Media Roots

Photo by Flickr user foto 3116

MEDIA ROOTS – Citizenship unites all of us around share rights and responsibilities, which guide our daily conduct.  We have the right to express ourselves and the responsibility to respect others, participate in the democratic process, and pursue happiness.  However, the increased militarization of state and local police forces has helped propagate a climate in which citizen journalists are victimized for taking on the role of the fourth estate.  To prosecute citizen journalists for undertaking their responsibilities is tragically inconsistent with our fundamental rights as U.S. citizens.

The plight of citizen journalists is one of many issues that the U.S. corporate media regularly ignores. Instead, it holds citizen reporting in contempt while it caters to the inane and vacuous in order to attract the advertising revenue associated with this lowest common denominator.  Consequently, the corporate media’s hollow reporting ostracizes critical thinkers and citizen journalists instead of confronting the difficult issues of our day.  The results are grim: U.S. corporate media actively represses political expression and social activism, while permitting militant police forces to grow relatively unhindered.

Paradoxically, police squash their own interests when suppressing citizen journalists, since these journalists are providing a public service for all U.S. citizens by providing much needed transparency. Despite numerous obstacles, citizen journalists have taken the reins in order to provide the United States with independent news, information, and raw coverage of current events.  Citizen journalists and concerned citizens (e.g. Luke Rudkowski, Tim Pool, Scott Campbell, and Jesse Myerson) arm themselves with open minds, modern technology, and determination en route to changing the oppressive status quo.  Abby Martin of RT raises awareness by richly documenting this struggle.

Christian Sorensen

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Abby Martin reports on the attack on citizen journalists for RT TV

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Photo by flickr user cikagajamie

MEDIA ROOTS – Being held in a solitary cell with virtually no human contact for long periods of time is tantamount to torture.  Human beings are social creatures that are supposed to move and interact with other humans–being cramped in a small box and denied human contact is proven to cause massive psychological damage as well as physical deterioration. 

Last Tuesday, a groundbreaking Congressional hearing took place on the use of solitary confinement in the US.  For the first time ever, Congress discussed the use of this technique on prisoners and listened to emotional testimony from former prisoners who were not only wrongfully imprisoned, but held in solitary confinement for years before being exonerated with DNA evidence.

Whistleblower Bradley Manning was subject to this inhumane form of imprisonment for many months before his pre-trial hearings began.  However, Manning’s treatment was especially degrading because he was forced to strip down naked every night.  I spoke to Kevin Gosztola about the landmark hearing on RT TV.

Abby Martin

Kevin Gosztola, blogger for Fire Dog Lake talks about the Congressional hearing

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INNOCENCE PROJECT –  Today Anthony Graves, who was exonerated after spending 16 years on death-row in Texas, testified at the first-ever congressional hearing on solitary confinement about the horrors he faced while held in solitary confinement.  The Innocence Project also submitted written statements to the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights on behalf of five men and one woman about the inhumane treatment they experienced in solitary confinement while incarcerated for crimes they didn’t commit.  The six men and women were all represented by different member projects of the Innocence Network.  Today they submitted statements as individuals and add their voices to the many others that ask the Congress to stop this practice. 

“As the stories of these six exonerees so starkly illustrate, placing someone in a tiny cell and cutting them off from regular human contact is an extreme punishment with grave psychological consequences,” said Maddy deLone, Executive Director of the Innocence Project, which is affiliated with Cardozo School of Law. “But what’s truly shocking is how frequently prisons and jails in this country use this practice.  Nearly all of wrongly convicted that I’ve spoken with have their own disturbing story about time spent in solitary confinement. We are relieved that Congress has decided to shine a light on this far too common practice, and we hope that the voices of the exonerated will be useful as Congress and others develop meaningful reforms to stem its use.”

The Innocence Project submitted personal statements on behalf of the following:

Julie Rea was wrongly imprisoned for three years in Illinois before being exonerated in 2006.  She describes that she was placed in solitary to keep her from harming herself and was then tormented by prison guards who played a recording of a woman being tortured to prevent her from sleeping. 

Cornelius Dupree, who was exonerated by DNA after spending 30 years in Texas prisons for a crime he didn’t commit, details receiving one complete meal only every three days when he was placed in solitary.  The other two days he received a spoonful each of rice and beans and a roll.

Robert Dewey, exonerated in 2012 after spending 17 years in Colorado prisons for a crime DNA proved he didn’t commit, was placed in solitary because the medication he was prescribed after back surgery caused him to fail a drug test.  While in solitary, he was denied medication on the schedule his doctors had prescribed.

Nicholas James Yarris spent 23 years in solitary confinement on death row in Pennsylvania before he was exonerated by DNA in 2003.  While incarcerated he attempted suicide and a year before he was finally freed asked that he be executed rather than continue to be held in “endless degradation.” 

Clarence Elkins describes being numb when he was finally released after being wrongly imprisoned in Ohio for 6 ½ years because he had spent the last three months in solitary confinement to “protect” him from the real perpetrator who committed the crime in his case and was incarcerated in the prison.

Herman Atkins spent 16 months in solitary confinement during the 11 years he was wrongly imprisoned in California before DNA proved his innocence.  He describes being confined to a small windowless room with a light always on to allow correction officers to watch him at all times, and says, “When a government has the authority to treat people so poorly, it’s impossible to hold citizens to a higher standard.” 

Congressional testimony from Anthony Graves about his ten years in solitary confinement

A copy of the complete statements submitted on behalf of the six wrongly convicted individuals is available at

http://www.innocenceproject.org/docs/SolitaryStatementsFinal.pdf

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Photo by flickr user Bob Jagendorf

MEDIA ROOTS – US Senators Mark Udall and Ron Wyden have asked the National Security Agency to reveal an estimate of how many Americans the agency has spied on through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).  In 2008, FISA was expanded to allow the wiretapping of phone and e-mail communications without a warrant, and there is virtually no oversight of its wiretapping operations.  The NSA’s ironic response to the Senators’ request: revealing that information would be a “violation of privacy.”

I interview Ginger McCall, director for EPIC’s Open Government program about FISA privacy concerns and EPIC’s Freedom of Information Act request, revealing the Department of Homeland Security’s official list of absurdly innocuous words they search for when they spy on social media networks.

Abby Martin

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Ginger McCall, director for EPIC’s Open Government Program on NSA hypocrisy.

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US NEWS – Wyden, who has earned a reputation as an aggressive advocate for privacy, is pushing NSA as the Senate debates the reauthorization of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, a bill that allows the government to wiretap individuals outside of the U.S. and any communication they might have, even if they engage with American citizens.

But NSA says it cannot reveal how many Americans might be affected because the effort would be too great an undertaking.

“Obtaining such an estimate was beyond the capacity of [the] office and dedicating sufficient additional resources would likely impede the NSA’s mission,” the inspector general of the intelligence community told Wyden in a Monday letter.

The NSA inspector general also concluded that revealing even an estimate of the number of Americans under surveillance would “violate the privacy of U.S. persons.”

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Photo by flickr user ListentotheMountains